Commodore C64 Manual: Visible Solar System (1982)(Commodore)[a]

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR USING

You are the commander of a spaceship on a journey
through our Solar System. The ship has a cruising range
of over 1 billion miles and is packed with computerized
equipment to help you bring home new and exciting
discoveries.

Turn off your computer and install the Visible Solar
System cartridge. When you plug in the Visible Solar
System cartridge you will see a model of Mercury, Venus,
Earth and Mars revolving around the Sun. Notice that the
planets move in neatly ordered and nearly circular orbits
around the Sun. A second feature of your ship will soon
appear — a close view of the planet Earth and a few facts
about its size and motion. You will be able to visit other
planets of the Solar System as you continue on your trip.
WHEN YOU SEE PRESS F1 TO START ON YOUR
SCREEN PRESS F1 TO BEGIN.

NAVIGATION

This is your space flight control panel. It lets you monitor
and change the position of your spaceship. From the
center of screen outward are the orbits of Mercury,
Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter. The associated numbers
show the distance of the orbits of these planets in hun-
dreds of millions of miles from the sun. The present posi-
tion of your spaceship is shown in red. On the left top of
the screen you see the altitude of the ship in millions of
miles above the orbits of the planets.*
ANY TIME YOU WISH TO RETURN TO THIS SCREEN
PRESS 'O' (ORBITS).

' Imagine the orbits neatly d ravin on a piece of paper. The altitude is the distance
ot Ihe spaceship above the paper.

Your ship is equipped with a rotating view camera which
shows you the orbits and movement of the planets in
three dimensional perspective as seen from the ship. The
angle at which the camera is pointing is shown on the
lower left of the screen. The little blue target shows you
where the camera is pointing. An angle of means the
camera is looking straight down from the ship. As the
angle increases the camera is being slowly tilted forward.
When it reaches 80 it will be looking almost directly ahead
of the ship.

TO VIEW THE ORBITS OF THE PLANETS FROM THE
SHIP PRESS 'V (VIEW).

From the center of the screen outward you see the orbits
of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter. But this time
as they actually appear in space from the spaceship.
TO RETURN TO YOUR INSTRUMENTS PRESS 'O'.

TO FLY YOUR SHIP USE THE KEYS SHOWN BELOW.

Move the RED TARGET, as explained below, to where you
want your ship to go and THEN PRESS 'G' and your ship
will go there.

The BLUE TARGET will reappear to show where your
camera is pointing.

SPACESHIP CONTROLS
CRSR — *• MOVE RED TARGET RIGHT

CRSR I MOVE RED TARGET BACKWARD

*-r * MOVE RED TARGET LEFT

I MOVE RED TARGET FORWARD

G MOVE SHIP TO RED TARGET

U MOVE SHIP UP

D MOVE SHIP DOWN

CAMERA AHEAD
CAMERA DOWN

In addition, two special animated spaceflights have
been pre-programmed into your ship. Press 'S' and your
ship will go to a low altitude and SCAN across the solar
system. When the animation is done, press '0\ Press
'A' and the ship will fly from 50,000,000 mites above
Jupiter's orbit and approach the orbit of Earth. Press 'O'
when this animation is done. (These animations leave
your ship at an altitude of only 15 million miles above
the solar orbits, lower than you can normally fly your
ship. If you wish, you can stay at this low altitude and
explore, or you can RESET to 30 million miles by press-
ing 'F3' and then 'FT.)

CLOSE-UP ON THE PLANETS

The planets Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn can be viewed

at close range.

PRESS 'P' TO VIEW THE PLANETS CLOSE-UP.

To change planets press 'P' again.

On the top of the screen is a diagram of the Sun (left) and
the seven nearest planets. The little blue star shows
which planet you are looking at. ORBIT distance from the
sun and RADIUS are in miles. YEAR is in days on Earth.
DAY is in hours on Earth. Only some of the moons of
Jupiter and Saturn are visible from your spaceship.

The force of gravity is different on each planet. WEIGHT
shows how much you would weight on the planet if you
weighed 160 pounds on Earth. AGE is how old you would
be on the planet in YEARS OF THAT PLANET if you were
24 Earth years old. (Turn to TOUR OF THE PLANETS for
more information.)

PLANETARY COMPUTER

If you want more information about the six closest

planets; Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter or Saturn

(1-6), or wish to compare them with each other, use your

ship's Planetary Computer.

TO ACCESS THE COMPUTER PRESS A NUMBER FROM

1-6.

On the top of the screen is the name of the planet, then its
distance from the Sun in miles. Astrocalc is a special
feature which lets you make comparisons between
planets. Before demonstrating Astrocalc, let's take a look
at the information on the left and center of the screen,

RADIUS in miles — is the distance from the surface of
the planet to its center. The radii of Jupiter and Saturn
are measured from the top of their dense layers of
clouds.

YEAR in Earth Days — is the time it takes for the planet
to complete one orbit around the Sun.

DAY in Earth Hours — is the time it takes forthe planet
to rotate once.

MOONS — is the number of moons that revolve around
the planet.

ORBIT in Miles perSecond — is the speed of the planet
in its orbit.

ESCAPE velocity in Miles per Second — is a measure
of how fast a rocket must travel to escape from the
gravity of a planet.

TO ATM. in - degrees Farenheit — is the temperature
at the top of the planets clouds.

WARM ATM. in + degrees Farenheit is the warmest at-
mospheric temperature.

SURFACE in + degrees Farenheit — is the surface
temperature of the planet.

IF YOU SEE •*-, IT MEANS THAT THE PLANET IS NOT
GENERALLY DESCRIBED BY THAT INFORMATION.

ASTROCALC

TO COMPARE PLANETS PRESS 'A'

until you see the planet you wish to compare under the

word ASTROCALC. Here is an example.

You have selected planet 3; the Earth, and wish to com-
pare Jupiter to the Earth. Press 'A' until JUPITER appears
under ASTROCALC. Jupiter's year is 12.7 times as long as
Earth's year. Jupiter is 5.0 times as distant from the Sun
as is the Earth.

If you see •*- it means that ASTROCALC can not make the
comparison. Look at the two planets individually.

TOUR OF THE PLANETS
Earth

The outline of the continents is seen. What countries can
you identify? Can you identify any of the United States
sea-coast states? Most of us have seen photographs of
Earth from an orbiting spacecraft. On such photographs a
portion of the Earth's surface is obscured by the clouds of
the planet's weather patterns. On your screen the land
masses are outlined in order to be seen clearly. About 2/3
of the Earth is covered with water. Can you name some of
the Oceans and Seas?

The temperatures on our friendly planet are moderated by
the atmosphere which keeps the heat of the surface from

escaping rapidly into space. Conditions on Earth are
balanced for life. This is not so on any of the other planets.
As an example, Venus has such a dense atmosphere that
the heat from the sun which warms it gets trapped. The
temperature on the surface of Venus is over 875 degrees
F., which is even hotter than Mercury. Though there are a
few other places in the Solar System where some kind of
life could be possible, none has been found.

Earth's atmosphere consists mostly of a relatively inac-
tive gas, nitrogen. There is about 20% oxygen, which
animals breathe, and 2% carbon dioxide, which plants
"breathe" during the day. Plants convert the carbon diox-
ide to oxygen, which is very nice for the animals. The
animals, in turn, exhale carbon dioxide, which is impor-
tant for the plants.

The Earth has one unusually large moon. Its radius is 1080
miles, 2/3 the size of the planet Mercury.

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is smaller than
Earth and has little atmosphere to keep it warm. Its year is
about twice that of Earth but its day is about the same.
What you see on your screen is the pinkish color of the
surface and some markings which are the major surface
features discovered by our space probes. There are many
craters, mountains, and tremendous volcanoes. There is a
little water on Mars, mainly as frost at the two poles. The
water and winds of the thin atmosphere have eroded the
surface and large sand dunes have been photographed by
spaceprobes that have landed on the surface of the
planet. Mars has two small moons. During the day the sur-
face temperature only rises to a little above degrees F.

Jupiter

Jupiter is a giant gaseous, cold planet. Very little heat
reaches it from the Sun. The picture on your screen
shows some of the bands of dense clouds which entirely
surround the planet. Jupiter is smaller than a star, but in
some solar systems in the universe, a planet like Jupiter
would grow to maybe 10 times its radius and become a
second smaller star.

The planets from Jupiter outward are not at all like the
four inner planets. The inner planets are small and rocky,
while the outer planets are larger and consist mainly of
gas with frozen surfaces. Jupiter's atmosphere is so deep
and dense that it may not even have a definite surface.
The pressure deep in the atmosphere changes the clear
distinction between gas, liquid and solid material as we
know it on Earth. The atmosphere of Jupiter is mostly
hydrogen and helium like our Sun. A notable feature in the
atmosphere is the giant red spot which is a tremendous
atmospheric storm. There is a warm layer in the at-
mosphere which may reach a temperature of 60 degrees
F., though elsewhere temperatures drop to under 200
degrees below zero F.

Saturn

Saturn's surface is probably frozen ammonia and
methane gasses. Like Jupiter, we see a banded, dense at-
mosphere. Saturn's distinctive feature is its ring system
which was recently studied by the Voyager space probes.
The rings are from 1 to 40 miles thick and are mainly small
icy particles of frozen gas. The temperature on Saturn
drops to 300 degrees below zero F.

Asteroids, Comets and Meteors

There are other objects in our Solar System besides the
planets. Asteroids are smaller objects (as tiny as dust to
several hundred miles in diameter) which travel around
the Sun in an orbit between Mars and Jupiter.

Comets are small objects which travel in unusual
elongated orbits that approach close to the Sun at one
end. When they do, we see a long trail of debris which
escapes from the comet when it gets heated by the Sun.

The debris can get trapped by the gravity of a planet. Most
of the Meteors, or 'shooting stars' we see on Earth are
from this debris burning up in our atmosphere.

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© 1963 Commodore Electronics Ltd.

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